Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/324

314 would see his sweet English friend established there as châtelaine?

A sense of immeasurable loss came over Paul de Virieu But, no, he had been right! Quite right! He loved Sylvia far too well to risk making her as unhappy as he would almost certainly be tempted to make her, if she became his wife.

He took off his hat and remained silent for what seemed to his companion quite a long time.

"By the way, what is Mrs. Bailey doing to-night?" he asked at last.

"To-night?" replied Chester. "Let me see? Why, to-night she is spending the evening with those very people—the Wachners, of whom you were speaking just now. I heard her arranging it with them this afternoon." He added, stiffly, "But I doubt if your impression as to these people is a right one. They seem to me a very respectable couple."

Paul de Virieu shrugged his shoulders. He felt suddenly uneasy—afraid he hardly knew of what.

There was no risk that Sylvia Bailey would fall a victim to blackmailers—she had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to conceal. But still he hated to think that she was, even now, alone with a man and woman of whom he had formed such a bad impression.

He took his watch out of his pocket. "There's a train for Lacville at a quarter to ten," he said slowly. "That would be an excellent train for—for us—to take"

"Then are you thinking of going back to Lacville too?" There was that sarcastic inflection in the Eng- Eng-